Here is an interesting analysis piece on the decline of the UK Conservative Party from another user at squabbles. It gives an analysis of factors contributing to their future prospects.
Note: I’m not the author of this piece and all credit goes to the original poster.
we can dare to dream. These are tricky shapeshifters, and they have alot of money
This at the top of page 2 is key:
Voters are no longer becoming more Conservative as they age, this is well-known these days but is mainly attributed to the fact that people are not generating wealth which Conservative policies are designed to protect.
It used to be that you accumulated wealth and property as you aged, and this made you naturally inclined to be a small “C” conservative. However, Tory policy over the last dozen years has not just destroyed that dream for the young but hammered it for older voters too (and using culture wars as misdirection, directly from the Republican/autocrat playbook) is only working to a limited degree.
So this not only creates a core of angry young voters who will, hopefully, come out in larger numbers but it is eroding their vote with the old too. That looks to be a perfect storm for the Tories. I hope.
It’s also about the (stupid yet deliberate) decision the Tories have made to pivot to culture wars politics.
Left-right politics had historically displayed an age effect you describe - you get older, your income increases, you accumulate wealth and become a homeowner, etc, and so you start to care less about government spending and more about taxes. Even if that effect is weaker at the moment, it’s still there for many people.
Cultural politics displays a generational cohort effect. You adopt a set of cultural values when you’re young - about race and immigration, LGBTQ+ people, your country’s place in the world, authority vs individualism, etc - and then you largely carry those values with you until you die.
Tory politics used to be largely about the former, with a sprinkling of the latter. But under Boris, Truss, Sunak, Braverman, Mogg, Patel, Dorries etc - they’ve flipped that around. The Tories have defined themselves around the Boomer generation’s cultural values, but that means as people age they aren’t becoming more Tory.
The great problem they’re going to face is that they’re putting so much effort into telling Millennials and Gen Z (and even to some extent Gen X) that our values are wrong and they are lined up against them, that as we start to account for a larger proportion of the electorate it’s going to be very hard for them to shake the stench, even if they drop the rhetoric. Being ‘not Tory’ is becoming shorthand for our generations’ political cultural values…
I’d love to know how cognisant they are of this, and whether they believe it.
I feel like they are aware to some degree, as there voter base shrinking does get talked about. But they seem to be doing nothing about it. There social media on Instagram is predominantly aimed how there stopping the the boats. Where this to me would be the perfect platform for them to be announcing policy’s at helping young people. So perhaps your right to question whether they believe it.
